Dev Blog 22
Battlestar Galactica Online - Development Blog 22 - Typhon is coming! 4 December 2014 Hey pilots, With the winter cold approaching, we thought you’d enjoy a behind-the-scenes peek at the upcoming winter event. Additionally, we’ll reveal some new information about the upcoming server merges and show you a few other things that the team has been working on. Here’s a rundown of today’s big topics: *Winter Event *Server Merge Status *Unused Account Removal *Unity 4.6 'Winter Event' This year our schedule has been densely packed with preparations for the server merge. This is why we didn’t have a Halloween event and why we, initially, did not plan to have a winter event either. However, we came to the conclusion that the community would appreciate some additional content to help shorten the waiting time until the bigger updates arrive. The winter event isn’t very large in scale, but it will bring you some nice eye-candy and possible additions to the game in the long run. We won’t reveal the final details about the event within this blog, but here’s a small teaser to give you a taste of what to expect: Every once in a while, Humans and Cylons share a common foe. For the past few weeks, prophets in both factions have been suffering from horrifying dreams involving Typhon, a mythical wreaker of chaos and destruction in ancient Kobol lore. The legend tells us that Typhon will one day “emerge from the mist” and rain heavenly judgment upon the children of God, who dared sully his name. Panic has been spreading throughout both fleets. Some pilots even report sightings of strange, glowing shooting stars – impossible to locate on DRADIS. Has the time for divine retribution finally come? 'Server Merger Status' This isn’t an easy topic. First of all, we would like be as transparent about this process as possible. Secondly, we would like to wrap up this process as soon as possible. Internal and external discussions and decisions necessary to carry it out, also tends to slow things down at times. Furthermore, there are external stakeholders involved, since this game is based on an IP. Universal and BP are actually reviewing the current state of the game, including past and future plans, roadmap and vision. Agreements based on those discussions will ultimately decide the direction of the next steps. BP has already agreed to make a large investment in new and much more powerful hardware to lay out the groundwork for the future of BSGO. The plan is to unite all servers (per continent) to one big “mega-server”. This way, we can create a completely new in-game atmosphere. Competition will rise on a global level and faction imbalances can be tackled more quickly. Additionally, the new hardware might fix some performance issues. In recent weeks, the team evaluated and iterated several approaches to make this happen and we achieved some great results. That said, ordering as well as implementing the new hardware into the BP structure will take some time. Until then, the team is preparing take the necessary steps to merge the current databases. We’re also working on further adjustments to the game entry including the new character selection, a renaming functionality, as well as a long-term feature for faction balance. Those might not be active from day one or with the server merges, but are planned to follow as soon as possible. We are currently aiming for a server merge for the latest at the end of Q1 2015. This is not a fixed date, it can be earlier or later, but at least we want to give you a rough estimate about the expected timeline. 'Removal of Unused Accounts' As part of the previous dev blog, we talked about removing unused player accounts from our data bases. This will happen with the upcoming update 48. This step is required to ensure good results with the planned server merges. It also reveals a couple of blocked user names for new users. We will delete all unused instance accounts which match entirely the following criteria: *Lower than level 9 *Last login before 01.03.2014 *Never purchased Cubits If one of your instance accounts matches the criteria and you want to keep it, make sure to log in before the update on Tuesday, December 16th. Just to be clear – no global account will be removed. This change only affects single instance accounts. If you try to log into a server with this type of account after the update you will create a completely new character according to the regular procedure (faction/character selection, tutorial etc.). Once removal is complete, characters can’t be restored. 'Unity 4.6' Unity 4.6 has been released, which allows us to switch the third-party UI system to an internal Unity solution. This doesn’t mean that the style will change again, but it might have a small positive impact on performance and actually improves the quality of the font readability. Additionally, the internal UI solution will improve maintainability and reduce side effects. As this Unity update was focused on UI changes, we do not expect it to influence anything else. Last but not least, the Battlestar Galactica team would like to wish you a merry Christmas and a great start into the New Year! I hope you’ve enjoyed our blog update and I look forward to chatting again with you soon. Thanks for your patience and continued support for BSGO. Tobias_BP Category:Developer Blogs